1769 E. Raffald Experienced Eng. House-keeper v. 143 To make Gofers. Beat three Eggs well, with three Spoonful of Flour, and a little Salt.

1847–78 J. O. Halliwell Dict. Archaic & Provinc. Words Gofer, a species of tea-cake of an oblong form, made of flour, milk, eggs, and currants, baked on an iron made expressly for the purpose, called a gofering iron, and divided into square compartments. Linc.

1853 C. Brontë Villette I. viii. 142 Regaled with gaufres and vin blanc.

a1855 C. Brontë Professor (1857) II. xxi. 109 Having eaten an unlimited quantity of ‘gaufres’.

1876 F. K. Robinson Gloss. Words Whitby Gaufers, tea-cakes of the muffin sort, square, and stamped like net-work with the ‘gaufering-irons’.

1883 P. Robinson Sinners & Saints i. 14 Here, too, in Chicago, I found a man selling ‘gophers’... I do not know the American name for this vanish-into-nothing sort of pastry.

1877 F. Ross et al. Gloss. Words Holderness Gaufre-irons, a bivalved iron mould with long handles, in which gaufres are baked on the fire.

1769 E. Raffald Experienced Eng. House-keeper v. 143 Make your Gofer Tongs hot, rub them with fresh Butter, fill the bottom part of your Tongs and clap the Top upon, then turn them, and when a fine brown on both Sides, put them in a Dish.

1967 J. O'Hara Instrument i 65 ‘Teddy's used to being my gofer.’ ‘Your what?’ said Ellis Watson. ‘You never worked in radio. A gofer goes for coffee.’

1968 W. Safire New Lang. Politics 167/1 Just after John Lindsay took office as New York's Mayor in 1966, a minor controversy arose when it was charged that policemen were being used as ‘gophers’—to bring coffee into the Lindsay offices.

1970 Time 28 Sept. 66/2 She plays an inadvertent career girl, jilted by the rounder she put through medical school, and working as a ‘gofer’ at a Minneapolis TV station.

1972 Telegraph (Brisbane) 8 Mar. 30/4 It has got to be charm all the way for the high-powered diplomats at the U.S. State Department, should their secretaries courteously offer to fetch them cups of coffee. For..a secretary is not a ‘go-fer’, as Americans term those who ‘go for’ coffee, cigarettes or sandwiches at the behest of the boss.

1975 Weekend Mag. (Montreal) 8 Nov. 12/1 He finally gave the job to Geary, the team go-fer,..the man who..had never been given a chance to show his stuff.

1978 J. Krantz Scruples x. 285 A producer was somebody on a studio payroll who was used chiefly as liaison between the studio heads and the director, a glorified gofer.

1978 M. Puzo Fools Die xlvi. 488 His assistant..was really a gopher for Simon but tried to give us some of his own ideas on what should be in the script.

1981 Listener 22 Jan. 124/1 Burt Lancaster plays Lou, an ex-bodyguard and gofer for the mob, still running the bedraggled tail of the numbers racket.

1982 Underground Grammarian Nov. 8/2 The typesetter, the printer, a few untitled gofers, and even the assistant circulation manager, were led into ineptitude and disorder a couple of months ago.

1932 Baseball Mag. Oct. 496/3 When a pitcher ‘makes one too good’,..he throws a ‘gopher’. They hit it and ‘go fer’ two, three, or four satchels.

1962 Washington Daily News 1 June 63/2 Ralph Terry of the New York Yankees and Phil Regan of the Detroit Tigers are running head and head today for the unwanted gopher ball championship of the major leagues.

1968 R. Coover Universal Baseball Assoc. v. 148 Partridge was throwing gopher balls and his..teammates were fielding like a bunch of bush-leaguers.

1986 Internat. Herald Tribune 22 Sept. 5/5 Any informed student of the game knows that no pitcher wants to go down in the record books as having been the pitcher who served up a record-breaking gopher ball.